Social Media goes pink for breast cancer awareness during October, and so have I. The month of October was declared “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” in 1985. Think Pink October!

Breast Cancer Awareness, a Brief History

Pink ribbons are often worn to commemorate a survivor or a love one who lost the battle. In recent years, corporations sponsored events, organizations put on races, grocery products were imprinted with pink ribbons. The goal has been increased awareness of and raising of money to fight breast cancer. Many of these campaigns continue. Some are still successful while others have not been. (More about that shortly.)

In 2007, viral marketing expanded reach of this campaign with the launch of television shows dedicated to breast cancer awareness - Deal or No Deal and Warriors in Pink were dedicated to raise awareness of breast cancer.

Social Media has gone pink for October in 2008. Continue Reading »

All email is subject to being hacked, not just Gmail. Here are a few tips to relieve concern about spoofing, including how Google users can connect securely to Gmail.

Spoofing

Spoofing occurs when your email account is hacked and used to send a spam message to all your contacts.

A friend’s Gmail account was spoofed this week. Below is the message sent to all of her contacts:

DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS IF YOU RECEIVE SUCH A MESSAGE!

Spoofed email messages also revealed every address in the victim’s contact list!

She called Google, changed her password, and deleted all her contacts. What a mess! Continue Reading »

“Take 5 - Top 5 Take Aways” is a new series in which I share my key take aways from recent industry trends, news, tools about search, social media and online marketing. A series infers a regular schedule, so plan on Take 5 to be posted weekly. Which day? I’m not sure, yet.

Why 5? Take 5 is a spin off from “eat 5 fruits and vegetables each day.” It’s often hard to eat properly with busy schedules. It can also be challenging to keep up with rapid changes in search engines, social media and online marketing. However, most of us can digest five key points without feeling overly stuffed with too much information.

Continue Reading »